Puthuppally bypoll: Polling begins; Over 1 lakh voters to decide fate of LDF vs UDF battle

The byelection in Puthuppally constituency started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm today. The results will be announced on September 8.

The first election in Puthuppally in 53 years will take place without Oommen Chandy's name appearing on the ballot. The voting process started at 7 AM and will last until 6 PM. Election results will be announced on September 8. There are 1,76,417 voters in the constituency. The LDF decided to give themselves an advantage by picking Jaick C Thomas, whom Oommen Chandy faced a stiff battle in the previous election. In addition to the 54,328 votes they received the previous time, they are aiming for 10,000 more.

There are 1,76,417 voters in the constituency, including 90,281 women, 86,132 men and 4 transgenders. A total of seven candidates, including three front candidates, are in the fray in the elections being held after Oommen Chandy's death. Puthupally is seeking the mandate after three weeks of intense campaigning.

Chandy Oommen, Chandy's son, has been a candidate for the Congress-led UDF opposition, seemingly in an effort to take advantage of the sympathy wave following the passing of the former CM.

The 2019 Lok Sabha elections saw PC Thomas win 20,911 votes in the Puthuppally constituency, giving the NDA in Kerala the highest majority. The NDA's candidate is Ligin Lal in this election. It will also be interesting to see how many votes Luke Thomas of the Aam Aadmi Party receives.

For the Assembly constituency, a total of 228 ballot units, control units, and VVPAT machines have been set up, along with an additional batch of 19 VVPAT machines for reserve. In collaboration with C-DIT, IT Mission, Akshaya, and BSNL, webcasting has been made available at all 182 polling places. From 5.30 am on Tuesday until the polls closed, the control centre at the Collectorate will stream live video of the events at the polling places.